Minimal version requirements

For setting up a decent GNOME development environment you should be on a fairly recent distribution to avoid fighting with old problems and dependencies. The following instructions assume that you have installed Fedora 18 on your computer already.

Development specific package groups

Fedora provides a set of groups that contain nearly all relevant packages for software development. You can use the following command to install three groups which cover the development in a GNOME environment:

In addition, you will want to install the documentation packages of this libraries so you can view them in the API browser:

$ sudo yum install gtkmm30-doc gstreamermm-doc

Python

Python uses GObjectIntrospection which means you don't need to install additional development libraries but you should be sure to have a decent python environment installed though this is the default in Fedora. Also you need to install the pygobject package to be able to use introspection:

$ sudo yum install python pygobject2

Vala

As the Vala compiler actually translates your code into C code you will have to install all the packages listed in the C section and in addition you need to install the vala compiler:

$ sudo yum install vala vala-devel vala-tools vala-doc

Note that you need to install all appropriate development packages (*-devel) for libraries you use in your vala code.

JavaScript

JavaScript uses GObjectIntrospection which means you don't need to install additional development libraries but you need to have the JavaScript intepreter installed though this is the default in Fedora: